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 Replies: 17 / Views: 3,915 |
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Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts |
What if all coins were minted without dates ,just MM locations ? I'm talking ALL coins ,classic and modern . and all countries . Would you still collect them just by MM ? Or would you not collect coins at all ? I would not bother to collect any coins at all . I am , and always were a date ,mm ,and grade collector ,so coins without dates would mean nothing to me . The only avenue I can possibly think of is to become a silver stacker which I am not at the present time . Would like to know what other members would do if dateless coins were really a reality ?    |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6370 Posts |
Then I would continue pursuing my type set. Many ancient coins were minted the same way, and there are no shortage of collectors of them.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1314 Posts |
I collect some world coins by type, and have about 1,500 different types. So that part of my collecting wouldn't change much. For another part, I study the dies to make a given coin, so that wouldn't change much. The only few I collect by years are some of the US coins, that would suffer. |
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Valued Member
United States
309 Posts |
Consider early English silver that may be dateless but does have King, mint mark and mint master symbol which does date the coins to one or a few year span. They are highly collectible with a denomination set by mint master just as much an accomplishment as a date run. The mint master symbols are more fun than date digits to include crown, portcullis, Lis, tun, anchor, and all manner of medieval beasts.
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Pillar of the Community
Norway
1358 Posts |
Look at it this way: if dates never would have been introduced on coins, would you have missed them at all? You wouldn't know that it should be part of a coin, as it is here on this planet nowadays. Now let's state that someone suddenly introduced a coin with a date on it (just like someone introduced colored coins or so). Wouldn't you be like 'my, that's something new! I'm not sure if I like it or not...' Or maybe you'd even find it a revolting idea. Just look at this thread here: https://goccf.com/t/247655In other words: to me it wouldn't have made a difference. I'd probably still be attracted by those shiny tiny discs which tell a history on their own. Edited by UltraRant
07/04/2016 05:13 am
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Moderator
 Australia
16841 Posts |
Dateless coins are the reality for most ancient and mediaeval coin series. There are plenty of people that collect them anyway.
Collectors are a funny bunch. If we didn't have dates to sort and categorize, we'd find some other way to partition coins by differences and make them special to collect. I suspect that error and variety collecting would be much bigger.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4809 Posts |
 All good reasons above. I like having the date angle, but what's been really interesting here is reading what some of our fellow enthusiasts are able to establish based on the other 'clues'. While all coins cant be dated with exact precision, even the rough estimates made, given the detective work introduced, make the hobby exciting! |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5856 Posts |
Yep, I'm primarily a type collector as well, so it wouldn't really bother me a whit.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
I really don't see anyone making coins with just MM on them and no dates. However, I could see dateless coins being made. This would stop a lot of coin collectors and coin hoarders so the Mints of the World could slow down manufacturing new coins all the time.
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Moderator
United States
188952 Posts |
I would be a world type collector. My 7070 would have a lot of friends. it is something I want to do anyway, once I finish the date/mint sets.  |
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Moderator
United States
54282 Posts |
Quote:
I really don't see anyone making coins with just MM on them and no dates. However, I could see dateless coins being made. This would stop a lot of coin collectors and coin hoarders so the Mints of the World could slow down manufacturing new coins all the time. I do not think that coin collectors take a significant amount of the current years coins out of circulation to the point that any mint would be able to start minting less coins ("slow down"). For example, in 2015, the US Mint made about 9 BILLION cent coins. In 2014, 8 BILLION, in 2013, 7 BILLION, in 2012 6 BILLION. The trend is to make 1 BILLION more cents each year. How many coins would have to be NOT removed from circulation to relieve the mint of making more cents? Show your financial support of the Coin Community Family (click here)See my topic on Mexican Numismatic Medals (click here) |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
The AD dating scheme is based entirely on math done by medieval historians who had incomplete records. The most glaring example of this is the fact that the Bible mentions that King Herod ordered the "massacre of the innocents" in response to news of the birth of the Messiah and king of the Israelites.
Cross checked with Roman records, Herod I died in 4 BC.
Dates are funny things.
One of the most common late Roman designs is commonly known as the VOT, which would celebrate the fulfillment of a certain number of years of service (5, 10, 20) along sometimes with additional vows to serve for additional years. E.g. a coin bearing VOT XX MVLT XXX would roughly mean "I have fulfilled my vows to be a good emperor for 20 years, and vow to see the empire through to my 30th year." Curiously, more than a few emperors issued these coins despite not living to see their 20th year in power. In particular, Gratian issued one such coin despite holding power for only 16 years, and being only 24 when he was assassinated.
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5174 Posts |
Quote:
Then I would continue pursuing my type set. Many ancient coins were minted the same way, and there are no shortage of collectors of them. This basically. (I was not actually interested in ancient coins until I was already collecting for a while, but I was mainly interested in the types and mintmarks rather than the dates for a while already.) Quote:
Collectors are a funny bunch. If we didn't have dates to sort and categorize, we'd find some other way to partition coins by differences and make them special to collect. I suspect that error and variety collecting would be much bigger. One problem of this is that there are often much more varieties that there would've been dates. The Kleshchinov-Grishin catalogue has over a hundred different "types" just for the reign of Ivan IV. A lot of ancient and medieval coin types have, in fact, been catalogued by die pair. (Some, like Septimius Severus denarii, are perhaps not catalogued as such but are still studied by die pair.) Even for the rarer types there are often very many. Quote:
Look at it this way: if dates never would have been introduced on coins, would you have missed them at all? You wouldn't know that it should be part of a coin, as it is here on this planet nowadays. Now let's state that someone suddenly introduced a coin with a date on it (just like someone introduced colored coins or so). Wouldn't you be like 'my, that's something new! I'm not sure if I like it or not...' Or maybe you'd even find it a revolting idea.
In other words: to me it wouldn't have made a difference. I'd probably still be attracted by those shiny tiny discs which tell a history on their own. I'd say it would probably be closer to this type in perception - assuming that regular types are, in fact, still made over multiple years. Which they might not be. IIRC, some medieval places changed the designs of their coinage every year or so (or even more often), making dates unnecessary. It's not especially unlikely that, in a world where nobody thought of dating their coins, such a thing would've happened in a lot more places. (That or something more like the English practice of regularly changing "mintmark" symbols.) Then we'd have a wild variety of designs - kind of like ATB Quarters, I suppose - to collect from every country. That would make coin collecting a lot more like what stamp collecting is in our world - with the sheer variety, collectors would concentrate on either a specific country, or a specific theme (the latter is rarely seen in our version of coin collecting, as any particular theme would usually only have a few coins in it). ...I know that I was interested in mintmarks more than dates in my early childhood (before the age of 7 or so) - when there were 3-4 series of types changing over a short time, and the last one was still produced with frozen dates. Dates were also fascinating, but they were a "before my birth" thing - between 1991 and 1997, ignoring several rare varieties I didn't know about, all types were represented by only one year. (I was very surprised when I found out that there are both 1997 and 1998 coins of the same type - of course the lack of such might well have pushed my coin collecting on a different way.) It is perhaps such frozen dates, rather than a lack of dates at all, that the OP was thinking of. In this case, yes, type and variety collecting would become a lot more popular. Edited by january1may
07/05/2016 1:55 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Here's a good example of what it might be like: https://www.NGCcoin.com/price-guide...-duid-174675Those coins show up all the time in ebay lots when someone needs a cheap boost to their advertised date range for a lot. The 1816 date was frozen in place until 1852. Spain also did a similar thing, where the prominent date was the "authorization date" which would remain frozen, while a tiny star with incuse numbers held the actual date of minting. A lot of collectors don't know that the US did a date freeze for a while during the switch away from silver. 1964 coins have a curiously high mintage, which is actually due to the fact that they were still being made into the early months of 1966! The Mint decided that it would be best to straddle the fence for a while, just in case the loss of silver in the dime and quarter caused people to riot. In many cases (at least in the Nickels), the 1965 and 1966 were not even made until well after their purported year. Things were all caught up by 1967, and went back to business as usual in 1968. |
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Moderator
United States
188952 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Nice read, jbuck  In a sense, I think that the lack of variety in many cases does hurt the lasting value of a coin. A few examples: - The ultimate record holder for design freeze is the Chinese "Wu Zhu" coin, which was made continuously to static standards from 118 BC until 618 AD. I once won a lot of 10 of these coins off of ebay for $2. - Following this are the Kai Yuan cash, struck from 618- 907. Variants with identifying marks are worth more, but generic cash are worth a couple bucks at most. - India struck a few coins, notably the Gadhaiya Paisa (a silver or billon, drachm-sized coin descended from the Sassanid drachm), the "bull and horseman" jital, and a few other bronze coins, each made with neligible change for 200+ years (700-1300 AD timeframe), and as a result common enough to barely fetch $10 on ebay, even for well preserved coins. Collectors only care to have one, which drops demand for the type well below its supply. |
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Replies: 17 / Views: 3,915 |
Posted 07/03/2016 08:34 am
